Weeds (Kelley)/Chapter 13
On the evening of the great day, Jerry and Judith took the baby and his bottles over to Aunt Mary Blackford, who was only too glad to have charge of the little darling. Judith felt as happy and excited as though to-morrow was to be her wedding day. She was unrestrainedly voluble even to Aunt Mary. When she and Jerry got home, they scrubbed themselves in the washtub, laid out their clean clothes, and went to bed, setting the alarm for two o'clock.
When they heard the alarm clock's noisy ting-a-ling, they jumped out of bed as eagerly as two children on Christmas morning. It was one thing to get up early to set tobacco and a much easier thing to get up early to make a trip to Georgetown. They had breakfast and did up the morning chores by lamp and lantern light; and it was still night, with no light but that of the stars when Jerry tied the lantern underneath the cart and they clambered in and started Nip up the steep path that led to the ridge road.
The path was full of the smell of damp earth and growing grass, mingled from time to time with the heavy scent of flowering locust trees. As they swung out onto the smooth pike, the first rays of the sun came slanting across the fields, casting long morning shadows. To Judith there was something vastly exhilarating about this driving out of the night, out of the creeping gray, out of the dimly growing twilight into the full blue and gold glory of the morning. She had a sense of infinite freedom and gaiety, as though the whole world had become a holiday place. It was the first time that she had been away from the baby since he was born eleven months before. Out of pure exuberance she began to sing:
He bumbles all araoun',
He sucks the honey off'n the flower
An' puts it in the graoun'.
Jerry too whistled with joy of the spring morning. But it did not mean to him what it did to Judith. His nature did not respond to the stimulation of natural things; and he had not been shut up in the little house in the hollow all winter. To him the drive was only a little more enjoyable than many other recent drives; and the sway of the cart, the rattle of the wheels and the rhythmic pounding of Nip's hoofs did not mean to him, as to Judith, a triumphal progress.
She was wearing a new dress of white with tiny red dots, and a sunbonnet that she had cunningly contrived out of a big red bandana handkerchief. Under the red sunbonnet her dark yet delicate beauty glowed like the silken flame of a poppy.
Standing back behind its two gloomy hemlock trees, the little shanty in which Jabez Moorhouse lived was brightened into silver gray by the morning sunshine and smoke was pouring from the chimney. A few hens scratched about the door, and a white-breasted collie sunned himself on the step and looked intelligently about. Jabez was in the yard chopping wood to feed his morning fire. Half of his shirt tail hung out of his overalls, as it nearly always did, and his head and hairy chest were bare. He paused in his chopping as the cart came rattling gaily along the road and waved his hand to the young couple, who waved back to him. After they had passed he stood watching the retreating cart till it disappeared around a bend in the road.
A strange thought suddenly took possession of Judith. She found herself wishing that it was Uncle Jabez who was sitting beside her instead of Jerry. Together she and Uncle Jabez would notice all sorts of things; and they would point them out to each other and laugh and wonder and enjoy the beauty and strangeness of the world. Jerry was different. For a moment she felt cold and dreary.
As they trotted past Uncle Ezra's long white mansion, they glimpsed Cissy's face pressed close to the little kitchen window.
Jogging along toward Clayton, they saw the smoke of breakfast fires curling up in white columns and vanishing into the blue. About the houses that they passed dogs were barking, roosters crowing, and hens cackling. Men were leading horses to water, women milking, and children picking up chips around the chopping block.
"I'll bet Joe's most there by this time," said Jerry, as they swung out of Clayton. "He said he was a-goin' to leave at midnight so's to be there fer the fust tradin'. Funny the way he does. He hain't never got the money to buy nuthin, an' he hain't got much to trade with neither. An' yet he don't hardly miss a Court Day in a year; an' he's baound to be there fer the fust dog shootin'. An' Gawd, haow he does drink! He says it helps him to fergit his troubles."
"It looks like Bessie Maud don't git much chanct to fergit her troubles."
"Well, she makes 'em fer herse'f."
It was about nine o'clock when they pulled up in the main street of Georgetown and gave Nip a drink from the fountain. They had traveled a little over twenty miles.
"We'll tie up in there," said Jerry, nodding sidewise in the direction of a grassy back street. "It's a nice, quiet place to eat our lunch, an' there's grass fer Nip."
Judith sprang out of the cart and together they started out to see the town.
Trading was already in full swing. The main street was lined on both sides by buggies and spring wagons, with here and there an automobile. The side streets, too, were quickly filling up, as farmers' rigs of various kinds came rattling into town looking for a place to tie up. Riders galloped along the street, sometimes leading one or more horses behind them. And in a vacant lot that flanked one of the hotels a human ring had formed itself around a group of restive mountain cattle in the midst of which a sun-browned young fellow was gesticulating and talking loudly. From this ring one could see the back quarters of the hotel piled with heaps of boxes, crates, old lumber, and refuse swarmed over by flies. From the inevitable large pile of scrap iron and tin cans, a few as yet unrusted surfaces reflected the sun's rays like mirrors.
The street in front of the hotel was thronged with a crowd of men wearing, not the clothes they put on for funerals, but something a little better than the clay-caked overalls of daily wear. The swinging doors of the bar were already active on their limber hinges, and a smell of beer oozed out into the street, carrying a suggestion of kegs and coolness.
As they passed these swinging doors, Joe Barnaby came out, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
"Howdy, there, yo'all. You jes come?"
"Jes tied up," said Jerry.
"Me I bin here this two hours past. There's bin some mighty smart tradin' a-goin' on. Two bunches o' maounting cattle sold dirt cheap. If I had a place o' my own I'd like to git me a few head o' them maounting cattle an' slick 'em up with good feed an' mate 'em to a short horned bull. They'd sell good when they come fresh, an' there'd be money in it. But anybody can't do nuthin 'ithout capital. The young uns eats up everything I kin make fast's I make it. So there you are. 'Ithout land or capital a feller goes raound year after year the same old turns, like a squirrel in a cage, an' comes back at the end right where he started from."
It was not at all like Joe to make so long a speech; and both of his listeners looked at him a little surprised. The smell of mingled beer and whiskey on his breath gave the explanation.
Georgetown could boast of a population of only a scant five thousand. But with the crowded streets and the bustle and activity of Court Day, it was a metropolis to these dwellers in lonely hollows. The three strolled along, looking curiously at the people they met and being looked at by them in turn. It was an excitement to see so many of their kind at once. Most of these people wore in their eyes and about their mouths that look of vague, mild blankness characteristic of country people in Kentucky. The attention of every one was divided between the crowds and the shop windows, in which the Georgetown tradesmen had cunningly placed on view such articles as they considered would most appeal to the Court Day crowds. The hardware merchants had taken their lawn mowers, carpet sweepers, and phonographs to the back of the store, and displayed instead rows of cheap, tin-plated wash-boilers, gray enameled sauce pans, sheep shears, tobacco knives, hoes, rakes, shovels, and cheap butcher knives. The windows of the dry-goods stores were full of overalls, corduroy trousers, work shirts, apron ginghams, and sleazy but bright colored calicoes. The two druggists had withdrawn their tooth brushes, toilet soaps, and cosmetics, and vied with each other in a tempting array of patent medicines, nursing bottles, sheep dips, and veterinary remedies.
The Town Hall, where the Court sat, showed unusual signs of activity. Boys swarmed over the stone steps; and one of the two policemen of the town walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the entrance. From time to time some one would hurry up or down the steps. More likely than not such person was baldish, parchment skinned, dressed in a rusty black suit, and carrying a leather satchel.
On every side there was uproar. Horses whinneyed and neighed, wheels rattled, small boys yodeled for joy of the crowds and excitement. From every direction came the sound of men's voices proclaiming loudly in the familiar phrases of the horse trader the virtues of the animals that they had to sell or trade.
Listening to the peans of the traders, one would be led to believe that all the horses for sale or trade were splendid animals, young, healthy, vigorous, and docile. A glance around, however, belied this impression. Very few conformed in any way with the descriptions of their enthusiastic would-be vendors. There were old horses with hanging heads and sagging haunches, bowed like an old man at the knees and shoulders. There were vicious horses, with evil, suspicious eyes and ears that they laid back ominously. There were weak, spindly horses, with no breadth to their backs and haunches that sloped away into nothing, like the shoulder of a ringleted mid-Victorian female. There were old race horses, once good for the track, now good for nothing whatever. There were horses with clumsy, ill-shaped legs and awkward feet, that could hardly raise one hoof without setting it down on another. There were horses, naturally of good disposition, which had been made irritable and vicious by bad training. There were horses with all sorts of bad habits. There were horses with the heaves, horses with ringbone, spavin, stringhalt, and a dozen other equine diseases and defects.
The really good horses were very few in number; because a good horse can readily be sold near home and for a good price. The farmer used Court Day as an occasion for trying to get rid of the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the aged.
Everybody knew this; and yet everybody who had a little money in his pocket and many who had none at all, bought and traded horses on Court Day. It had become a passion which swayed in spite of reason, like the lure of the lottery or the seduction of the gaming table. Horse trading, with the drinking which accompanied it, was to these lonely tobacco growers their one joyful extravagance. It was their dissipation, their romance, their single oblation to the god of life and joy.
Around the corner of a side street, the Blackford party glimpsed Uncle Sam Whitmarsh in conversation with a lithe young man wearing a broad felt hat over a face that betokened life in the open air. Each man was holding the bridle of a horse. Coming up to see what it was all about, they found that a trade was in progress.
Uncle Sam was never so taken up with a trade that he had no time for his friends. He beamed a welcome on his good neighbors and his son-in-law.
"Howdy, Jerry. Howdy, Joe. Waal, Judy, you're a-lookin' like a rose in May. You don't mind a old man like me tellin' yer wife she's handsome, do you, Jerry? . . . No, stranger, the mare's too light. I hain't got no youst for her no more'n a hen has for teeth."
The horse that Uncle Sam held by the bridle was a heavily built iron gray work horse apparently about twelve years old. He was a bit clumsy looking, but on the whole sound and healthy in appearance.
The stranger's horse was a beautiful cream colored mare with large, intelligent eyes, small ears, a gracefully arched neck and slim yet strong looking legs, the very perfection indeed of shape and proportion. Not even a track horse could be daintier in appearance. Uncle Sam tried to look at the animal with disdainful indifference; but for all his experience in the art of dissimulation, he could not keep out of his eyes a covert gleam that glinted of admiration and coveteousness.
"I'd suttenly never dream o' lettin' her go under a hundred," the young trader was saying. "But I jes can't take her a step fu'ther 'ithout shoes, an' I hain't got the money to git her shoes. I've had hard luck lately, stranger. Gawd, what hard luck I've had! Many a time this past month my three babies hain't had all they cud eat; an' me an' my wife has gone hungry fer days together. The two linin's o' my pocket has got to know each other good these past weeks. Lookit the shoes I got on, willyuh? I can't git shoes fer myse'f, let alone fer the mare."
Uncle Sam looked down at the shoes and saw that they were badly scuffed and that the young man's foot was bulging from a slit in the leather on the side of one of them. A good deal of the stitching on the other one had come loose; and it was laced with a shaggy scrap of binder twine. Whether the soles were through or not Uncle Sam could not see.
"An' lookit my shirt. It's the on'y shirt I got, I swear it is; an' it hain't a-goin' to cover my nakedness much longer."
He turned around with a broad grin and showed a long slit over the shoulder blade, through which his healthy, sun-browned skin shone with a satiny sheen.
"Naw, even if she didn't have nothin' the matter with her feet, the mare's too light. I hain't got no youst fer her."
Uncle Sam took a sidewise step, spat over the edge of the curb, and made as if to jump into the saddle.
"I tell yuh, an' I'd swear it on the Holy Book, there hain't a thing the matter with them there front feet. The poor beast's footsore, that's all's wrong with her. If you'd come from Williamstown this mornin' 'ithout shoes, wouldn't you be dead on yer feet? Gawd, them rough, stony roads is hard on a good shod hoss, let alone one that hain't got no shoes at all. I wouldn't think o' tradin' fer that awkward lout o' yourn, not fer a minit if it wa'n't he's new shod. I gotta be on the road to-night agin, an' I gotta have a hoss that kin travel along."
"Naw, she hain't nuthin to me. She's too light."
"But look what a beauty she is! Wouldn't you be praoud to drive a hoss like that? Wouldn't yer wife be praoud to drive her? Lookit the color of her. Look haow she holds her head. Lookit them round haunches. Lookit them slim, dainty legs. If she hain't sound an' perfect in wind an' limb you kin take this las' shirt off'n my back."
"Naw, I can't use her."
Uncle Sam made another move toward the saddle.
"I'll let you have her for twenty-five dollars boot. Bejasus, that's givin' her away. But what kin a man do when his pocket's flat? A baby kin have the best of him."
For about the twentieth time Uncle Sam looked into the horse's mouth and assured himself again that she was in very truth only five years old. Then he carefully ran his practised hand down each of her legs, feeling for bumps and finding none. Then he meditatively scratched his head.
"Waal, I tell yuh, stranger," he said, after a long period of deliberation. "I hain't got a passell of use fer the mare; but I'll give yuh five dollars boot. That's the best I kin do."
After a great deal of further parley, they compromised on ten dollars boot. Uncle Sam took two five dollar bills out of his well worn billfold and handed them to the trader, put his own saddle and bridle on the cream colored mare, wished the young man the best of luck, and the trade was made.
By this time it was getting on toward noon, and they went to the place where they had left the horse and cart to eat their lunch. Joe and Uncle Sam accompanied them, unfolding the lunches that they had brought in their coat pockets; and the four made a festive picnic meal together, supplementing what they had brought from home with peppermint drops and ginger snaps contributed by Uncle Sam, who was always a free spender on holiday occasions.
As they were eating, Uncle Sam entertained the little company with the tale of how he had that morning started out from home with a pocket knife and by a series of successful trades ended by possessing a fine new Colt automatic. He drew the revolver out of his pocket and caressed its smooth surfaces with his finger tips, a satisfied smile spreading over his foxy, fun-loving, and kindly face.
"The knife wa'n't a heap o' good," he said in his deliberate drawl. "So I up an' swapped it fer a dawg. I knowed I'd sholy have trouble gittin' the dawg back home, me bein' on hossback; so I traded him fer a watch. I had a purty good notion the watch wa'n't no timekeeper; so I traded it to Tom Pooler fer hisn that I knowed was a good un. Then I traded the watch fer a shot gun. It was a good shot gun; but I got two shot guns home; so I looked raound till I faound this here trade. She's a beauty an' she's jes the same as new."
He fondled the blue metal of the little death dealer with loving fingers.
"An' that's a rare beauty of a little animal I got yonder," he went on, nodding sidewise toward the cream colored mare. "When she gits shoes on her feet, she'll be fine as a fiddle. All in all, I'm praoud of to-day's tradin'. Some folks, 'specially wimmin, thinks a trader lives a idle life. But I tell yuh, tradin' hain't sech child's play. It takes hard work an' stickin' at it—an' it takes injinooity."
Uncle Sam's eyes turned meditatively inward and reposed upon himself, apparently not ill pleased with what they saw there.
"An' that there young feller thinks he's got a work hoss off'n me," he went on, musingly rubbing his lean chin with his lean hand. "Howsomever, 'twa'n't me that clipped the harness marks onto him. It was Edd Patton done it after he faound the hoss wouldn't work nohaow. All I done was jes to keep 'em trimmed a little."
After the meal was over, the three men sauntered away on manly pursuits, their steps leading them in the direction of the swinging bar door; and Judith was left to gather up the remains of the meal. As she was doing this, she saw the young man who had just traded with Uncle Sam come up and join the party belonging to a covered wagon which had tied up a few yards away. They were evidently his wife and three children; and the five ate dinner together, boiling coffee and frying bacon and eggs over a little gipsy fire of twigs and chips built between two large stones. The young trader seemed to be in high spirits and laughed and played light heartedly with the children. He recognized Judith as the young woman who he had seen standing by while he was trading; and frankly admiring her youthful good looks, he cast several bold glances in her direction, which his wife tactfully pretended not to notice.
After the meal was over, he went away again. Judith, giving herself up to an after dinner feeling of pleasant languor, sat on the grass under the big beech tree and watched the three little girls as they played house with a piece of board for a table and a handful of flat pebbles for dishes. Their mother, a faded, harassed looking woman, who was probably in the late twenties, although she looked much older, gathered up the broken egg shells and threw them on the fire, washed the gray enameled mugs and plates and put them away in the covered wagon. The three little girls were named Curlena, Sabrina, and Aldina. The faded mother, when she had occasion to speak to the children, called them by these names in a way which suggested that she derived pleasure from the sound of the long, euphonious, and unusual appellations.
After dinner lethargy does not last long in the young; and Judith soon grew tired of sitting idly under the tree. She got up, shook out her skirts, felt to make sure that she still had her little purse in her pocket, and started toward the town.
As she passed the covered wagon she paused; for country people do not go by each other without a word of greeting.
"Howdy, ma'am. You come from far?"
"From Williamstown this mornin', ma'am. My husband's a hoss trader an' he follers the court days. We're most allus on the road."
"You like the road?"
"No, ma'am. My husband likes it well enough; but I hain't never cared fer the road. It's a hard life—'specially with three young uns; an' you can't have things much better'n what the gipsies do. 'Tain't so bad purty weather like this; but then comes rains an' we have to take to somebody's barn, an' sometimes stuck there fer four or five days hand runnin'. It's hard then to dry the young uns' clothes an' to git any kind o' warm cooked food fer 'em. An' if they was to fall sick, I dunno what I would do. I'm allus glad when winter comes an' we have to go into lodgings somewhere. But 'tain't like havin' your own home."
"Would you rather your husband was a farmer?"
"'Deed I would, ma'am," answered the woman eagerly. She seemed to be glad to have some one of her own sex to talk to. "There hain't nothin' I'd like better'n to have a little home o' my own an' never have to move out'n it. I'd have flowers in the yard an' lace curtains on the front winders; an' I'd keep my three little gals dressed nice an' have a white cloth on the table. But seems like folks hain't in this world to git what they want, 'specially wimmin. Well, it's the men that has to earn the livin', an' I s'pose they gotta do it the way seems best to 'em."
She sighed resignedly.
Judith felt sorry for the woman. To some extent she could understand her point of view. It was as if sister Lizzie May, with all her finnicky little housewifely instincts, had fallen to be the wife of a wandering horse trader. She herself thought the life would be a jolly one, if one had no babies.
She turned away with a word of good-by and went on into Main Street, where she made delightful explorations in the dry-goods stores. Here in the dim coolness that smelt alluringly of new cotton goods, she wandered around with other back country women, fingering this and admiring that and looking lingeringly at the things that she was not able to buy.
Most of these women were stolid-faced, ungainly, flat-footed creatures, even the young ones wearing a heavy, settled expression, as though they realized in a dim way that life held nothing further in store for them. Some carried babies on their hips or had older children peeping shyly from behind their skirts, overawed by the strange surroundings. They looked at and fingered the pretty voiles, ginghams, and summer silks, then bought unbleached muslin, dress lengths of calico and spools of white cotton thread.
Judith bought some bright calico for dresses for the baby, and a piece of embroidered white muslin to make him a bonnet and a Sunday dress. Then, not being able to resist a certain pretty flowered muslin gay with pink rosebuds, she bought enough of it to make a dress for herself.
As she was loitering along Main Street looking into the shop windows, Bob Crupper came up from behind and looked at her admiringly with his boyish eyes.
"Hey, Judy, what you a-doin' here in the big taown?"
"Same thing you're a-doin', I reckon: a-loafin' an' a-idlin' an' a-spendin' what little money I got."
"Yaas, I expect that's about what we're all a-doin'," said Bob, and walked along beside her.
Now and then they saw in the crowd the familiar face of some one from their neighborhood; and Judith was conscious each time of a certain constraint in the look and greeting of these people, which would not have been there if she had been alone. Since her marriage she had begun to learn that a married woman cannot appear in the company of any man other than her husband without "making talk." She looked at the people she knew, from under her heavy eyebrows, with a challenging boldness that was half amusement, half irritation.
In front of the Town Hall they met Jerry, who turned and joined them. She caught the same expression on Jerry's face. This look which had caused her only a vague annoyance when seen on the faces of the neighbors, brought a surge of quick anger, when she saw it sneaking out of Jerry's eyes; and she began to joke and banter with Bob in a hectic way quite unbecoming to a married woman of the tobacco country. Her gaiety sent Jerry into a fit of the sulks; and he walked along beside them silent and glowering. The more he sulked and glowered, the more feverishly Judith laughed and joked. The smell of whiskey, that powerful stimulant of the male propensities, was strong on the breath of both the young men, and was in a great measure responsible for Bob's animation and Jerry's sullenness. Judith, however, was not intoxicated, and did not know enough about the effect of alcohol to make it an excuse for her husband's behavior. Under her levity there lurked a growing spirit of quite sober and very cold appraisal.
When they reached the place where Nip and the cart were waiting, the young horse trader had come back and was busy greasing his wagon and making other preparations for pulling out. He looked at Judith again but not quite so boldly, out of respect for her husband's presence.
Obeying that magnetism which draws people of the same sex together, the three men gathered in a little knot beside the trader's wagon and began to talk about horses, saddles, and guns. Judith went over to the woman, who had spread a gunny sack on the grass and was sitting on it mending one of her little girl's dresses, and they began to talk of babies, of cooking, and patterns for pieced bedquilts.
As the woman prattled scarcely heeded at her side, Judith felt stirring strongly within her a deep exaltation. The break in the deadening monotony of her days had affected her like a strong stimulant and she was keenly alive to things, tasting deliciously the full savor of life. She had forgotten her irritation at Jerry. All her perceptions seemed strangely sharpened. Her eyes took delight in noting niceties of tone and line and color, things for which she had no words but which were becoming with each year of mental growth more pregnant with suggestion.
She was so taken up with the delight of gazing about that she hardly noticed that Joe Barnaby had passed by and beckoned Jerry away, probably for the purpose of some further communion of spirits over the bar. Still less did she observe that after Jerry's departure the two men beside the covered wagon looked several times in her direction and dropped their voices to a very low tone. The trader's wife prattled on.
Suddenly and quite without warning, the whole scene went black before her. Against this blackness certain words stood out bright red. Her ear had caught only these few words; but they made the meaning of the whole sentence just spoken by Bob Crupper quite unmistakable.
When the black melted and she could see again, she felt herself tingling all over as if pricked by a million needles. She looked sidewise at the trader's wife to see if she had heard. The woman was running on about how hard it was to keep children in garters, too busy with her own chatter to notice anything said by anybody else. Judith knew that she was spared this much at least. She got up, made a stammered excuse about something that she had forgotten to buy, and almost ran from the hateful place.
She did not go toward the town, but in the direction of the deserted back streets. Among these she walked, at first with feverish haste, stumbling over clods and stones; then more slowly, as her rage and burning sense of insult subsided into dejection and misery. As she walked, she went over certain things in her mind. She saw Bob Crupper and Luke Wolf standing in easy attitudes by the spring wagon down in Hat's hollow. Bob said something to Luke, who turned and looked at her, and the two men fell to laughing together. She remembered certain looks from Luke that she had accidentally caught while they were stripping tobacco. She could see his little pig eyes squinting at her above his fat red cheeks. She called to mind all the details of Bob's visit to the house in the hollow. She remembered other things: whispers, looks, dark sayings that she had thought nothing of at the time; but that now flashed out of the past with vivid and sinister significance. She saw again the looks of the people that she had met on the street that afternoon while walking beside Bob. They were all too clearly explained by these few words that her ear had inadvertently caught and that now seemed to be burnt into her brain. It was the talk of the neighborhood, then; and there was only one person who could have betrayed the secret. It was desperately hard for her to force herself to this conclusion; but she made herself admit that it was the only one possible. That spirit in her which gave her eyes their level, searching look, which made her see through the flimsy shams and hypocrisies and self-deceptions of the people about her, forced her to look at her own situation with the same undeviating gaze.
She wandered about through sleepy, grass-grown back streets and lanes drowsing in the hot afternoon sunshine and deserted as a graveyard. She met nobody but an old man hobbling with the aid of two crutches. She had a feeling that the old man looked at her as if he knew and blushed furiously when she accidentally met his eye.
She took no note of the passing of time, and did not see that the shadows had begun to grow long, when she heard Jerry's voice anxiously calling her name and immediately after saw him appear around the corner of a fence.
"Hey, Judy! What the devil?" In his tone was the irritation which follows upon relieved anxiety. "Where you bin a-hidin' to? I bin a-lookin' all over taown fer you. I was beginnin' to think sumpin'd happened you."
Without waiting an instant, she turned upon him and accused him of what he had done. Even while she accused him, she felt herself buoyed up by a quite unreasonable hope that he would be able to deny her charge. The sight of him had for the moment restored her confidence in him. The moment, however, was a short one. Instantly she saw by his face that it was true, unbelievably but inexorably true. He stood before her sheepish, contrite and ashamed.
"Why did you do it?"
She flashed the words at him as if each one was a sword.
"Judy, I was drunk. It happened a long time ago, afore we was married; an' it was about the one time in my life I bin drunk enough not to keep my tongue in my head. Even so I could a bit it off soon's I'd said it."
She turned without a word and started to walk back toward the town. Disgust, like an avalanche of dirty dish water, put out the clear flame of her anger. The one thought left in her mind was that she was going back only because she had to go where the baby was. Jerry came up beside her and tried to take her hand; but she snatched it away and put it behind her back.
"Judy, it ain't sech a dreadful thing," he pleaded. "Course I hadn't otta done it, an' I wouldn't if I hadn't been drunk. But if you knowed haow most men is, an' haow they brag about everything like that, an' oftentimes when there hain't a bit o' truth in it, you wouldn't think so hard of me for one little slip."
He went on in this way, stumblingly trying to convince her that he was not a monster. But his pleadings fell on deaf ears, hard, young, intolerant ears that had learned from life no principles of judgment, yet were all too eager to judge. It was impossible for Jerry, out of his small experience of life and with the few words at his command, to tell her how deeply rooted in the young male is the urge to publish abroad his sexual achievements. She felt only that he was low, vile, and contemptible, no better than his cronies, the drunken young loafers whom he had, with such an unspeakable lack of delicacy, taken into his confidence, and who had been busy ever since rolling her secret on their dirty tongues. She loathed the whole odious pack of them, Jerry more than the rest. She walked on beside him silent and cold, without answering a word. Being able to make no impression on her with his pleading, Jerry too fell into sullen silence, musing on how hard she was. He felt chilled by a feeling that she was far away, that she did not belong to him, that she never had and never would belong to him as he did to her. A bitter feeling of estrangement and mutual distrust grew out of the silence like a dividing wall.
Turning the corner, they came upon Uncle Sam talking to Joe Barnaby and holding the bridle of a stolid, heavily built plow horse, not over young, but healthy and tough looking and apparently good for many more years of useful labor.
"What's went with the purty mare?" asked Jerry, trying with poor success to make his voice sound natural.
"She's changed hands, bless her shapely carcass," laughed Uncle Sam. "This here is one time when the old man was trimmed good, Jerry. After I left here, I took her over to John Hornby, the blacksmith, to git her shod, an' he ses to me:
"'Sam,' ses he, 'you're jes about the eleventh sucker that's brought me that there mare to hev her shod through this past winter an' spring. I'd jes as leave steal stovewood out'n a widder's back yard, Sam, as charge yuh money to put shoes on the feet o' that there animal.'
"'What's wrong with her?' I asks, anxious like.
"'What's wrong with her is she hain't no good fer nothin' whatever. She's track horse stock, but I wouldn't back her agin a mud turtle. She's part paralyzed in them there front legs. Everybody buys her thinks she's footsore; but after they've kep her a spell they find she's got a footsoreness that don't wear off. She's a purty animal an' it's a pity she's that way. But that's the way she is.'
"'Thanks, John,' I ses. 'I allus knowed you wuz a friend o' mine.' An' I leads the mare away.
"Twa'n't twenty minutes after I'd left the blacksmith's shop afore I had her traded fer this feller. He hain't no beauty, an' he hain't no fancy saddle hoss; but he's a hoss I kin use on my place. An' when I hain't got use fer him, I kin allus trade him easy. He's a good, solid, dependable beast, hain't you, Dobbin?"
He patted the horse's gray neck affectionately.
The sun was beginning to slant low in the sky, and a cool late afternoon breeze had sprung up. Carts and buggies and spring wagons rattled through the streets on their way toward the open country; and horsemen cantered past them, going in the same direction. Uncle Sam mounted his plow horse and with a farewell wave of the hand trotted ponderously away with the rest of the procession.
Jerry and Judith followed in the cart. As they passed through Main Street they were greeted by pervasive scents of stale beer and whiskey. The ground was littered with lunch wrappings, egg and peanut shells, and banana skins. The crowd had thinned out. Most of the family parties had already started for home; and of the unattached males who remained some were reeling and lurching about the sidewalk noisy with drunken laughter and ribaldry, others stood propped up against a hydrant or a telegraph pole, portentously solemn and self-important, arguing in declamatory fashion with companions as ridiculously drunk as themselves. Here and there a little knot had formed about men who were quarreling over some fancied grievance, their angry voices rising harsh and ominous as the whiskey seethed in their fuddled brains and they strode threateningly nearer each other and gripped the handles of the revolvers in their pockets.
Through the hubbub of this sordid bacchanalia the young couple drove in cold and sullen aloofness and passed out into the heavy silence of the country.